The fork in the road

Thirty years ago, two men left Morocco with their families; one settled in Toulouse, the other went to London. Both of the men had been married to a woman called Taanante: her children would grow up with the Channel - and a more subtle cultural gulf - dividing them. Christophe Boltanski and Jon Henley uncover a tale of two immigrant families

It's a real English Sunday. Tea and biscuits conclude a copious lunch. The wind and the rain lash the bow windows. On the telly, the football. Across the opposite pavement, identical red-brick semi-detached houses, each with their porch and their parking space. The whole family is in the living room, round a low table. The son, Aness, celebrating his 21st birthday, is recovering from a Saturday night out. His elder sister's 10-month-old baby is babbling on the sofa. Malika, the baby's grandmother, utters a cry of joy: "She said Allahu Akbar [Allah is great]!"

Malika, a brown-tinted muslin veil framing her permanently smiling face, is the eldest daughter of Taanante, and the product of her mother's first marriage (the families have asked us not to use Taanante's second name), who followed her father to London, then married and settled here. Malika returns regularly to Morocco with her husband, Hassan Fakruni. "On holiday," she says. "A month's enough for me. I miss my home sweet home." Her son Aness, wearing a shiny grey T-shirt, and multi-pocketed trousers, sighs. He refused the couscous because "I don't like it," but has deigned to show up for his cake.

The Fakrunis are a model of successful integration. Hassan left the Rif in 1969, coming to London on a friend's advice. Courteous and with a very British reserve, he now runs a big restaurant in Leicester Square. "To be honest, I never thought I'd stay so long here," he says. "Winter's so depressing. But when you have kids, it's hard to move." He looks proudly at his daughter Samira: 'She's almost a lawyer." He slaps his son on the back: "He's studying psychology at university. Al-hamdu lillah (God be praised), we have survived in Great Britain!"

They live in northwest London not far from Portobello Road, a little Morocco with stalls selling spices, shelves of north African vegetables, a mosque and community centre. Samira, 27, can't imagine living anywhere else: "I've got dual nationality, but I feel British." Not English - that's too loaded - but a citizen of a kingdom that has always been mixed. "Even if we watch EastEnders, drink tea, like the food and speak English among ourselves, that doesn't make us natives," she says. She is wearing a Sunday kaftan instead of her lawyer's robes. The teapot smells of mint; verses of the Koran are on the mantelpiece.

The family are practising Muslims. "Here, you can wear your faith on your sleeve," says Malika. "A headscarf or a jellaba, praying - it's no problem. There are mosques everywhere." Samira laughs: "And halal Kentucky Fried Chicken." She does not envy her aunts, her father's half-sisters, across the Channel, even after spending a year studying law at Lille university. "Here, everyone mixes but keeps their identity. In France, everyone has to go through the mixer."

Hassan recounts his visit to the Mirail estate in Toulouse, where his half-sister Mina lives: "I saw streets strewn with stones, burned-out cars. If you call an ambulance, it's not certain to come. We don't have such lawless zones here. There are parts of the Mirail that look like backward corners of Morocco." Samira steps in: "In London, there are times when you could be in Pakistan or Bangladesh." Yes, agrees her father, "but at least here, people have a job, a house".

Her suspicions about France have been confirmed by the French government's decision to ban the Islamic veil in schools. "It's just a piece of cloth, it does no harm to anyone!" says Samira, who has never worn one, having been allowed by her family to choose for herself. Her elder sister, Naiman, on the other hand, decided to wear the veil during the last Ramadan. "It was a need that came with age," she says, and "a response to attacks against Islam". "Everyone has their moments of existential crisis," says Samira, scathing. The two halves of the family on either side of the Channel disagree violently on the issue. "My aunt Jamila always rows with me about this," says Samira. "She's a primary-school teacher and she thinks secularism is a good thing."

She thinks Britain should keep a closer eye on what its imams are allowed to preach, even in school. "Colleges and universities invite all sorts of people," she says. "They're often fundamentalists. Once, during a university debate, I asked one of them how it was that if Islam condemned suicide, suicide bombers could claim to be Muslims. He never replied, and he started attacking me because I wasn't wearing the veil."

Naiman turns to her younger brother, Aness: "Remember the one who taught Arabic in your school. It was practically brainwashing." It's left to Samira to sum up. "In France, it's too coercive. Here, it's the opposite. They don't check up on anything, and they let us get on with things on our own. There should be a happy medium." CB

Something has changed in France's relationship with its immigrants in the 40 years since Mina and Fatiha's father Haddou, Taanante's second husband, came to Toulouse looking for building work. Sitting in Fatiha's spotless suburban living room, five minutes' drive from the sprawling estate where they lived for nearly 20 years, the sisters try to work out what it is.

What surprises them, thinking about it, is that things seem, somehow, to have got worse. Not for them, of course: they are two of the modest success stories of French immigration policy in the latter half of the 20th century. But in their memory, their childhoods were not like those of the kids growing up on the Mirail estate today. There wasn't the anger, the hopelessness, the violence, the torched cars. There wasn't the religion thing, the race thing, that whole self-defeating, hate-filled cité [estate] attitude. There wasn't, mainly, a staggering 36% unemployment.

"It was a privilege for us to move in to the Mirail," says Mina. "It was luxury. These were new, big, well-built flats, with central heating; there was masses of green space, nice schools. We had middle-class, European neighbours, schoolfriends who were Jews. It was genuinely a balanced environment. You couldn't say that now."

Now the Mirail is one of those decaying, crime-ridden, immigrant-filled, out-of-town sink estates in which France has sadly come to specialise. "A receptacle," says Mina, "for everyone here who is in difficulty. A place that fuels its own doubt and paranoia."

There is sweet green tea ("Not sweet enough," complains Mina) on the table, and slabs of chocolate cake. Two of Fatiha's three children, Amin, 15, and Selma, eight, listen politely. Fatiha was six when Taanante brought her, and two other older sisters, to join Haddou here in 1966; Mina, and two brothers, were born in Toulouse. Taanante, now very elderly, still lives in the area, having survived both her husbands.

"I've watched it happen, but I can't explain it," says Fatiha, an administrator at France's main distance-learning centre. "There's ... no more confidence. The first generation, we lived on very little, but there was a will to succeed. We worked at school; our parents set high standards at home. Now there's no hope. And people expect it all on a plate."

For Mina, who is unmarried, a town hall development officer on the Mirail estate with a masters degree in political science, the question is one she faces every day. "Working on the estate now you meet a hatred, a rejection of all dialogue, a complete absence of common ground," she says. "It's hard because I grew up there, I share their roots, and I'm seen as someone who has betrayed them."

Toulouse, lately, has begun trying to get a grip on the Mirail. Money is coming in, blocks including the one where Mina and Fatiha grew up are being dynamited. But the suburb, and the 1,100-plus other designated sink estates in France, mark, in a way, a frontier of the republic. There may be fraternity here, but there's not a lot of liberty, and there's certainly no equality.

The most sacred article in all France's grand republican and secular creed is the principle that everyone is equal and indistinguishable in the eyes of the state: no matter where they come from, all are identical in their Frenchness. This means France does not know exactly how many citizens it has who are of north African origin, or who are Muslim. And so only unofficial reports are available to show that for the past several years, unemployment among 20 to 29-year-olds of north African origin has been up around 40%, against 10% for youths of French origin.

Both sisters insist they have never felt discriminated against, in their education or their careers. ("Maybe," says Mina, "this nagging feeling that you have to prove yourself that little bit more. But that's all.") But equally, both acknowledge that wide-scale discrimination exists in France. "It may not be open, but it's evident," says Mina. "In high-up posts in the administration, TV, politics."

Under France's republican model of integration, the idea that different ethnic and religious groups might enjoy rights and recognition due to their minority status is unthinkable. But if the integrationist approach worked fine for earlier waves of mainly European immigrants, it is plainly not doing so for many of those from north Africa. Mina and Fatiha agree positive discrimination may now be the only realistic way out. "The republican model isn't functioning," says Mina. "It's not flexible enough. The big principles blind people to real problems on the ground."

That doesn't stop the sisters defending France's recent decision to ban Islamic headscarves in state schools. Although practising Muslims, neither wears the veil and both are "shocked" to see religion intrude so visibly into France's secular public arena. "I was in favour of the law," says Fatiha flatly. "It's only in schools, and public services like that are for everyone. In any case, women who wear the veil in France don't work, or only work in the ethnic supermarkets on the estates."

Every couple of years, the family goes back to Morocco. They are upset by the poverty, but feel that it is important to tend to their roots. And they travel occasionally to Britain to see their half-sisters and cousins. They find it a very different place. "There nobody cares where you come from, what you believe in and how you show it," says Mina. "Women can wear the veil or a sari, men wear turbans, it's all perfectly normal. I get the impression it's much easier there to get on, the melting pot means you can set up a business, for example, and your background just won't matter."

Maybe, agrees Fatiha, but that doesn't alter the fact that London is "impossibly expensive", that you wouldn't ever want to get ill there, and that if you were poor, "I've no idea how you'd survive." What would be nice, the sisters agree, would be something in between: Britain's freedoms, France's safety net. Now there's an immigrant's dream. JH